Utøya – July 22, 2018.
Directed by Erik Poppe.
Starring Andrea Berntzen, Aleksander Holmen, and Solveig Koløen Birkeland.
SYNOPSIS:
After detonating a bomb in a government building on 22 July 2011, far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik took his murderous attack to the heart of Norway: a summer camp on Utøya island. With the victims unable to escape, his murder spree took just over an hour, leaving hundreds injured alongside the dead. These are those 72 minutes.
“How soon is too soon?” is the common discourse when it comes to films depicting the kind of viscerally raw events we’ve already seen play out on rolling news stations a matter of years prior. Few were as indelible as the attacks on Utøya island, largely because it was an expression of hate carried out against the most vulnerable among us; children. Well, Erik Poppe’s Utøya – July 22 is a testament to those kids and what they experienced on that late Friday evening in 2011, one that’s a requisitely difficult watch, made without an ounce of sensationalism. It’s existence is up for debate, but you feel it’s justified by the fact it acts as a memorial to the strength of every child on the island.
Using eye witness accounts from survivors, Poppe creates fictional characters and forces you face down in the mud from the off with a single-take 72 minute exercise in terror. For our entire journey we’re running with the remarkable Andrea Berntzen, who’s introduced looking down the camera, telling us “You’ll never understand. Just listen to me”, only she’s not really, she’s on the phone to her mother, but it’s just one example of the creative skill with which the film is put together.
Utøya – July 22 is an account during which the frenetic moments are terrifying, as you’re flung to the floor with the group in a shuddering POV shot, or the camera does a 180 whip to accentuate the fear of being pursued, but in which the quieter, protracted scenes are more palpably scary because you’re waiting for the silence to be shattered by gunfire.
The use of sound is terrific in conveying and heightening the fear. There’s a hold-your-breath moment in which someone is creeping around the tents, and the way in which the sound of hearing the thump of an automatic weapon syncs with your own beating heart has a sickening effect.
The technical bravura is admittedly impressive, but it’s the human element that Poppe gets right. We’re never shown Breivik, aside from a scene in which he’s a calm shape moving through the trees in a sea of panicked students, and that feels like the correct decision based on what we’ve come to know about the man. This isn’t about him. So by focusing on a small group of kids, the drama remains intimate.
This also means that such a claustrophobic POV skews the geography of the island. You have no idea where the killer is, and that’s a petrifying thought, heightening the sense of realism which has already been established by kids who were going about their day, chatting about mobile phone chargers or decks of playing cards, with muddy patches on their knees and dirt under their nails. The shattered normalcy of it all is what hits hardest.
An understandably tough movie-going experience, try holding back the tears when a young girl innocently says “I want my mummy”, Utøya – July 22 is worth the endurance test for the through-the-wringer performance from Berntzen, and as an important reminder of the times we live in.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★ ★
Matt Rodgers – Follow me on Twitter @mainstreammatt
